One Cry to Startle Everyone

In his first three years on the throne, King Zhuang of Chu issued no orders and spent his days and nights in pleasure. His minister Wu Ju came to him with a riddle. “There is a bird on the hill. For three years it has neither flown nor sung. What bird is it?” The king answered: “For three years it has not flown, but when it flies it will soar to the sky. For three years it has not sung, but when it sings it will startle everyone.”

Months passed, and his pleasures grew worse. Only after a second warning, from the minister Su Cong, did he end them and take up government. The Records of the Grand Historian says that he then executed several hundred men and promoted several hundred.

The Long March Map

In January 2013, Cao Zhiwei, a member of the Guangzhou political advisory body, showed the mayor a chart of the approvals needed for an investment project. The project had to pass through 20 departments and collect 108 official seals. From approval of the project to the end of the approvals took 799 working days. Investors called the chart the “Long March map.”

According to the report, streamlining could cut the process to 232 working days, a reduction of 71 percent.

Thirty-Two Days

On December 7, 2022, the State Council’s joint prevention and control mechanism announced ten new measures. They ended most checks of negative test results and health codes in public places, and testing on arrival.

From January 8, 2023, COVID-19 was managed as a Class B disease. Mass testing ended. Infected people were no longer isolated, and close contacts were no longer traced. The two steps were thirty-two days apart.

Seven and a Half Hours

At 2:30 a.m. on January 23, 2020, the Wuhan epidemic prevention and control headquarters issued its Notice No. 1. From 10 a.m. that day, the outbound routes from Wuhan were to be closed.

The notice came seven and a half hours before the city was closed.

Into the Sea

下海 To go down into the sea. To leave a secure post and go into business. After Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour in early 1992, a wave of officials did so. Figures differ. People’s Daily’s magazine Global People cited the China Business Times: at least 100,000 Party and government cadres went into business that year. China Economic Weekly put the number who resigned at 120,000, and those who went into business without resigning at more than ten million.

Some kept a way back. 停薪留职 means to stop the pay and keep the post. Global People, citing Liaoning figures, reported that about 35,000 officials in the province resigned around 1992 to go into business, and that another 700 took leave on these terms to start companies.

Spare Tires

In the early hours of May 17, 2019, after the US Commerce Department added Huawei to its Entity List, He Tingbo of Huawei’s chip maker HiSilicon wrote to its staff. Thousands of HiSilicon people, she wrote, had built “spare tires” for the company’s survival, for a case they had assumed would never happen. “Today history has made its choice. All the spare tires we ever built have become regulars overnight.”

Waiting for the Time

藏器待时 To keep one’s tools hidden and wait for the time. To build one’s abilities and wait for the moment to use them. The phrase comes from the Book of Changes: “The gentleman keeps his tools on his person and waits for the time to act.” (君子藏器于身，待时而动)

Waiting for Notice From Above

In October 2025, a commentary on the People’s Forum website described two phrases that had become common in some places and offices facing a public controversy: “wait for notice from above” and “follow the leader’s arrangements.” Even matters clearly within an office’s own authority, it said, “must wait for a superior to speak.”

The commentary quoted Xinhua, which called this way of handling public opinion “looking only upward and not at the facts.”

Jiang Taigong Goes Fishing

According to legend, Jiang Taigong fished in the river Wei, hoping to meet a wise ruler. His hook was straight. When King Wen of Zhou found him and asked why, he said that the fish he wanted would come to the hook of its own will. King Wen took him as his teacher.

The saying 姜太公钓鱼，愿者上钩, “when Jiang Taigong fishes, the willing take the bait,” comes from this story.

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